He could have ended up this way. Were it not for that tragic event those many years ago, he could be one of these people grinding away. He’d be senior associate, junior partner age now, had he stuck with it, and he was set at a large firm not unlike the one he was now standing in. Maybe he’d have realized it on his own and escaped without the deaths of Peter and Thomas. He hoped he would have.
There was so much more to life than constant work.
Mac was once again realizing that truth as his week was coming to a frustrating end.
The week started so promisingly on Tuesday, with the developments at the crime scene. However, when Mac transitioned to the law firm on Wednesday, the momentum came to a screeching halt. He’d worked the case for three days, almost around the clock, and had found little to nothing that seemed helpful to Meredith’s defense, not one lead that pointed to someone other than Meredith.
J. Frederick Sterling was the highest-powered lawyer in a firm chock full of them. His corporate clientele, which kept a team of lawyers busy, netted the firm over twenty million annually in legal fees, of which Sterling collected a twenty percent origination on every hour billed on his files, in addition to the large amount earned from his own billable time. Historically, his practice was focused on litigation, some class action work, as well as corporate matters for a number of larger companies in the Twin Cities. Lyman, in passing, suggested that local corporations kept Sterling on retainer as a prophylactic measure just so he wouldn’t bring actions against them.
Mac reviewed Sterling’s currently active files for his corporate clients and a few slower-moving litigation matters he was pursuing. While he took copious notes and developed a detailed spreadsheet of cases, names, and outcomes or potential outcomes, none of the cases struck him as the kind that developed enough spite that someone involved would want Sterling dead. Rather, what he’d discovered was something he was loath to admit: Sterling was a great lawyer.
He may not have practiced law, but Mac knew quality lawyering when he saw it. There was precision in how Sterling handled and positioned cases, and in perusing a few deposition and trial transcripts, Mac discovered that Sterling was an absolute master at tying witnesses in knots. He played litigation as if it was a game of chess and he was Bobby Fischer, moving pieces on the board and letting the outcomes speak for themselves. J. Frederick Sterling may have been a philandering hound dog, but if you needed a civil trial lawyer in this part of the country, he would have been on the very short list.
Unfortunately, the immaculate attention to detail, the meticulous organization, and the sly chess moves seemed to have ended with the Gentry Enterprises file.
The file was simply titled Gentry Enterprises. There was no opposing party listed. In the last several months, Sterling’s practice was focused almost exclusively on the Gentry matter. Yet within the file was vanilla information that revealed little. There was literally nothing there.
Gentry Enterprises listed a corporate address in Bermuda. Mac called down, and the phone was answered by an answering service, and nobody physically occupied the office space. Bermuda’s lax business and tax regulatory structure made it an attractive offshore business address. Consequently, a business arrangement of this nature would raise nary an eyebrow.
The corporate trail did not end there. It ended in one more step, with an entity called EMR Group. The Caymans, like Bermuda, were a tax haven, and the EMR Group arrangement in the Caymans was similar to the Gentry Enterprises arrangement in Bermuda—a small office with an answering service. Mac could not reach a live body that could tell him anything about Gentry or EMR Group.
Lyman had an associate in his office dig into the tax and business records of Gentry Enterprises and EMR Group, and he found little. Gentry Enterprises rented various parcels of land in North Dakota to farmers, and that was the company’s income from which it paid taxes and then a salary of one million dollars to Callie Gentry. Her individual tax records showed income commensurate with that amount, as well as significant investment income from various holdings in numerous energy companies.
Something smelled.
There had to be more to this.
Entities like Gentry Enterprises and EMR Group and their opaqueness said there was something to hide.
The opaqueness didn’t end with the corporate structures. It flowed to Sterling’s file on Gentry.
Mac knew most cases generated piles of paperwork, whether a merger or acquisition or particularly if it was a litigation matter. Discovery in a large case, one in which millions in legal fees were billed, would lead to dozens of Bankers Boxes full of documents or thousands of electronic documents maintained on a litigation management software system. Not true with the Gentry matter.
No opposing party was listed, so it didn’t appear that what Sterling was doing with Gentry Enterprises was a litigation file, at least as of the time they were both murdered. Yet there was little other documentation to indicate it was a corporate acquisition matter. Mac couldn’t really tell what it was Sterling was doing for Gentry Enterprises. Sterling billed Gentry monthly. The first four months, the billings were $250,000 per month. Then the last two months were one million each. Yet on the billings, there was little to no detail, simply billing for attorney work. The billing records read like a retainer, but clients didn’t pay millions in legal fees for nothing, at least usually.
“What did you bill three million in legal fees for there, J. Freddy?” Mac mumbled to himself, shaking his head in frustration.
The only records that provided any insight on the activities up in North Dakota were a binder-clipped pile of property records for large tracts of land in and around Williston. A memorandum on top of the stack indicated Gentry owned ninety thousand acres, although when he worked through the clipped documents, there were only ownership records for eighty-eight thousand acres.
Interestingly, the parcels were located right in the heart of the Bakken Oil formation. Yet, no oil or gas drilling was taking place on the property holdings, at least on the holdings he could find in the file. He had a lawyer in Lyman’s office do a search on the eighty-eight thousand acres, but they were strictly agricultural, no oil drilling, no leases nor permits to drill for oil and gas.
Gentry Enterprises owned the land, having purchased it ten years ago from an entity called Sioux Companies. Sioux Companies, which no longer existed, was a North Dakota corporation established in 1976, and it appeared to exist for the simple purpose of purchasing and operating the parcels of land. The articles of incorporation were filed by a Bismarck law firm that no longer existed and by a lawyer long since deceased, so there was no way to determine who was really behind Sioux Companies or who made the decision to transfer the property to Gentry Enterprises, at least yet.
Then there was Callie Gentry herself.
The file contained no information on the client.
What Mac was able to cobble together was that Gentry had an address in the Woodlands, which he knew was one of the more desirable addresses in the Houston area. She was a graduate of Rice University and had an MBA from the University of Texas. She was divorced nine years ago and had no children. Her tax records showed annual income in the millions, but beyond her large earnings, her history was that of a successful businesswoman but otherwise unremarkable.
She’d worked for Houston-area energy companies up until eight years ago. Her tax records showed she was employed by Gentry Enterprises from that time forward, but what Gentry Enterprises did was unclear beyond the ownership of the tracts of land in North Dakota.
The one interesting insight on Gentry was that she traveled extensively. Summer Plantagenate had researched her travel pattern for the past year, which included multiple trips not only to North Dakota, but also to the Cayman Islands and Bermuda on almost a monthly basis. This was in addition to her travel to New York, California, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana three times, as well as Canada, Mexico, and London, England. “I bet she hadn’t sat in coach in ten years,” Summer noted.
He discussed it with Lyman.
“We’re going to have to roll up our sleeves and use whatever contacts we have to find out more about Gentry Enterprises, who this EMR Group is, and where it gets its money from,” Mac observed. “Somewhere at the end of the line, someone controls the purse strings. We need to find out who. The money goes and comes from somewhere.”
“What’s your passport status?” Lyman replied. “Because you may have trips to Bermuda and the Caymans in the near future.”
Dorothy Olson was Sterling’s secretary and, along with a senior partner, was overseeing Mac’s review of Sterling’s legal files. On Wednesday, when he arrived, Dorothy was cold, but slowly but surely Mac was winning her over. Never-ending politeness and a couple of timely and slyly delivered lattes helped. That and fixing a parking ticket in St. Paul went a long way to at least getting Dorothy to sit and talk to him in ways other than being compelled to do so. Mac felt particularly bad that she was being required to hang around the law firm as long as he was there. So he asked her about the Gentry file late on a Thursday night.
“Dorothy, Mr. Sterling kept immaculate files, for which I’m sure you’re largely responsible. Yet this Gentry file seems light, like there should be more—a lot more, given all the money Gentry Enterprises paid the firm. Is there any other file? Is there any other place these records might be kept? If so, is there any reason why they are not in the file?”
Dorothy couldn’t help. “I’m sorry, Mr. McRyan, but I’ve searched Mr. Sterling’s office and our file room, and this is all there is.”
“Is this unusual?”
The secretary nodded. “I usually know everything that is going on with his cases. However, with this case he was very tight lipped. All he did tell me one time was this one could be somewhat lucrative.”
“Was the term ‘somewhat lucrative’ code?”
Dorothy nodded. “Oh yeah, it meant it could be really big.”
“But how?” Mac asked as he gestured toward the one red-rope file that three million in legal fees had generated. “There’s nothing there.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he took it with him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, the day he was killed, he and Ms. Gentry worked right in this conference room all day long, going through documents of some kind.”
“Just the two of them?”
Dorothy nodded. “He used this room because there is only the small window on the side of the door here. He called this his war room, and it had a lock. Those few days before he was killed, he spent a lot of time in here.”
“So tell me what happened on that last day.”
“Mr. Sterling and Ms. Gentry worked all day in there. They took a lunch break but then were back in the afternoon. Then at the end of the day, they both packed up their briefcases and left.”
“Did you say Gentry had a briefcase as well?”
Dorothy nodded. “Yes. They both stopped by my desk to say goodnight, and they both had briefcases. Ms. Gentry, hers had a shoulder strap, very stylish, very expensive. Mr. Sterling had his, which had a shoulder strap as well because he carried his laptop computer with him.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
That might explain the lack of information in the Gentry files. But then where did it go? Sterling’s briefcase in his car at his lake house was empty, and Gentry’s had yet to turn up.
Given the dearth of information in the Gentry file, Mac turned to interviewing anyone who had regular interaction with Sterling, his files, and Meredith. In a firm of over three hundred lawyers, it was amazing how few people actually interacted with Sterling on a regular basis. It was clear that he was very particular about who touched his clients and files, and he had the clout to make it that way. He had a select group of lawyers who worked on his litigation cases and another select group that handled corporate matters. In all, there were twenty people who really worked with and had exposure to Sterling and his clients—four partners, six associates, five paralegals, three secretaries, and two in accounting who handled his billings. Sterling’s partners were at a loss to explain how any of the matters they’d been involved with could lead to someone wanting to kill Sterling. They were routine matters that had been handled for years without problem.
Interestingly, none of these people worked with or had any familiarity with Gentry Enterprises.
Andrew Fasth, a partner specializing in mergers and acquisitions, stated, “Frederick’s track record provided him a great deal of freedom in how he conducted his practice, so if nobody else touched the Gentry case, we wouldn’t have questioned that.”
“That wouldn’t have raised at least some ethical concerns? Three million in fees, and all the bills say is legal services—that wouldn’t make you at least ask what the case was about? What the firm was getting into?”
Fasth shook his head. “Frederick at times might have played a little fast and loose, but there were never any ethical complaints by either clients or opposing counsel. You have to understand, he was such a good lawyer, and frankly, made us so much money, he was granted significant latitude to conduct his practice. He was a rainmaker, one of the best lawyers in town, the best one in our firm certainly, so my partners and I generally let him handle matters however he desired.”
That included some of his less-savory traits, such as womanizing. Anita Cornelius-Ronning, who worked closely with both Sterling and Meredith, stated it best. “Frederick was impulsive and easily bored. He always had to be pursuing something, finding something new to go after and conquer. It was all about attainment—the pursuit and winning. But there never seemed to be enough. If it was a new client, he just wanted to collect it. If it was a car, he just wanted to buy it, and if it was a woman”—she smiled—“he just wanted to bed her.”
“Marriage didn’t matter?” Mac asked.
The lawyer shook her head. “I think it did, but only for awhile. I think each time he was married, he thought he was committed to the marriage, but you are who you are. I mean, you know this about him, am I right?”
“That’s what I told Meredith when we got divorced,” Mac said.
“And she didn’t listen.” Anita smiled. “Few do. Frederick had this innate ability to get people to gravitate to him, regardless of his character flaws. I swear he could talk the president of the United States out of the keys to the White House.”
Anita, in her late forties and dressed in a sharp power suit, wasn’t the least bit unattractive. “Did he ever take a run at you?”
She smiled. “He did, and I told him if he didn’t stop I’d kick him in the balls.”
“Did that stop him?”
Anita grinned at the memory, “He said it would only make him try harder, but he did stop, eventually. I think your ex-wife told him the same thing, at the start at least.”
“But she succumbed anyway,” Mac answered.
“Yeah, she did. But then again, she was a different person back then.”
Mac looked at her quizzically. “What do you mean, different person?”
“In the beginning, she was an impressive climber, pursuer and collector of things like position and prestige. She was the female version of Frederick. She was always in pursuit of something.”
“That sounds like the Meredith I knew. I don’t imagine that made her popular around this place.”
“No, she wasn’t, at least amongst her contemporaries,” she replied “And when she started with Frederick, you can imagine a lot of people thought she was simply trying to sleep her way to the top. But to me, that discredited her. She was a very good lawyer—is a very good lawyer.”
“My ex-wife might be many things,” Mac answered. “Dumb isn’t one of them.�
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“No, she’s not. That’s why this thing doesn’t make sense to me. Very out of character for her, especially given how she’d changed.”
“That’s the second time you’ve alluded to her changing. I’m curious—how did she change?” Meredith did seem a little different to him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but she wasn’t the same.
Anita thought for a moment. “I think it was the work around child abuse. One of the things I always thought about her when she first got here was that the reason she was always pursuing something new, whether it was the job, work, or even Frederick, was that she didn’t know who she was. So I think she thought that if she got this or that, it would make her into something. That she would have the answer to who she was. Then she found this work with the Prevent Child Abuse Network. These kids the Network puts you in touch with have been through a hell you and I can’t begin to imagine. Meredith’s lived a very privileged life, had every advantage, and I think seeing what happened to these kids who didn’t have any of those advantages really got to her. She found a calling, it seemed, because she was willing to put her partnership in peril for it.”
“How so?”
“Hours and dollars are the lifeblood for a firm like this. A lot of the work she did for the Network was at a much lower rate or was donated, and that was at the expense of billable time for the firm. She was up for partner last January and needed eighteen hundred hours plus revenue of six hundred thousand dollars in the prior year, and she just barely made it. Some people thought that Frederick slid some money into her column to make it happen, because the hours she spent on truly billable work and then the Prevent Child Abuse Network—the arithmetic just didn’t add up.”
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